Spitzer: Cuomo ‘Wrong’ On Millionaire’s Tax, Medicaid Reform

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer says he’s been trying to “avoid commentary” on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s performance todate, but couldn’t help himself when asked by the West Side Spirit to opine on the governor’s first 75 days in office.

The former governor-turned-CNN host said he disagrees with Cuomo about “certain calls,” adding:

“I think his absolutely no millionaire’s tax was, in this moment of crisis, wrong. Just as I thought extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy was wrong.”

“We talk so much about shared sacrifice, and if you look at the pincers of wealth accretion for those at the top over the past 30 years, the genuine deficit crisis that has been created, not just the sort of crisis out of the crisis which is the recession, which is a revenue crisis, but at the long-term structural deficit, we’ve been squeezing government by dropping rates, which would have been fine if the economy had grown.”

“But when it doesn’t, the question is how are we going to pay for basic things like education, infrastructure, health care. I disagree with him on that.”

Spitzer took issue with Cuomo’s strategy of putting health care players with a vested interest in the Medicaid debate – namely GNYHA and SEIU 1199 – onto the redesign team that hashed out a reform and cost-cutting strategy that included sweeteners for the industry (the indemnity fund, living wage) in exchange for accepting spending cuts.

“(L)etting the same folks sit around the table determine the allocation means you’re going to perpetuate the status quo,” Spitzer said. “And that’s why, if you think back to what we tried to do with health care, it was very much we have to change the system.”

“And the group that was left out of this was patient voices. We were changing it to say wait a minute; the big hospitals have to change their finance structure. They can’t survive on Medicaid, which is what they’ve been doing for the past 20 years.”

It’s no secret that Spitzer and Cuomo haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, and this isn’t the first time Spitzer has been critical of his successor (post David Paterson).

Remember: He initially said during the 2010 campaign that he wouldn’t vote for Cuomo (but later amended that) and also called him “the dirtiest, nastiest political player out there.”

The two Democratic heavyweights tangled over gun control when Cuomo was at HUD and Spitzer was a new AG.

In 2006, Spitzer didn’t endorse Cuomo in the Democratic AG primary until after Cuomo’s victory, and was widely believed to have preferred former NYC Public Advocate Mark Green in that race because he didn’t think Green had designs on the governor’s office.

Not long into Spitzer’s first year, Cuomo investigated the so-called Troopergate scandal – a mess that actually outlived the former governor’s time in office, thanks to his self-created prostitution scandal that ended up forcing him to resign.